So the Mountains May Echo
by Neshomeh
Summary: Ethne Duval swore off the adventuring life years ago, but Skyrim sucks her back in. Suddenly, it's her job to stop the end of the world, and even the so-called Dragonborn can't do it alone. Spoilers for the main questline and the Companions questline.
1. Skyrim

**Forenote:** I'm working from the assumption that the world is bigger in "real life" than it's portrayed in-game. My scale is based on Ralof's statement that the Stormcloaks were captured at Darkwater Crossing two days before the day of the attack in Helgen, the average speed of a person or a slow, steady horse in rough country, linear map distances, in-game travel times, and a lot of guesswork.

* * *

Skyrim was beautiful.

Ethne Duval thought so for the first time, and far from the last, having just escaped from the destruction of Helgen. It sneaked up on her unexpectedly.

After the darkness of the cave tunnel, she and Ralof the Stormcloak stood on the mountainside, blinking in the bright morning sunlight. Before they could even see properly, they had to duck beneath the shelter of a boulder when the monstrous black dragon roared overhead one last time before winging away to the north. And then the danger was finally past. They were at the head of a path overlooking the forested sides of the mountains to the northwest, and every tree looked dipped in gold, brilliant against the hazy blue summer sky. The smell of smoke and death was behind them, and the smell of pines beckoned. They were alive, and Skyrim was beautiful.

Ethne shocked poor Ralof by planting a sloppy kiss on his face then and there, filthy and blood-spattered as he was—as they both were. But hot-blooded young soldier though he was, he also was a good man, and he knew better than to read more into it than a simple outpouring of survivor's joy. Smiling, he blushed, grunted, and suggested they get a move on before anyone came after them.

He led her down the mountain at a hard pace, and she struggled to keep up in the hot, ill-fitting armor she had taken from one of his fallen compatriots. It was better than nothing, though, and she bore her fatigue in silence. She couldn't complain to the man who'd cut her bonds and was still helping her, a perfect stranger and a foreigner, to boot.

The only thing they had in common was being dumped onto the same cart for transport to the executioner's block in Helgen. For him, though, that was enough. Anyone the Imperials wanted dead was more likely to be sympathetic to the cause of the Stormcloaks. He suggested that she consider joining, and she told him she would think about it.

In truth, she was ambivalent about the civil war. She certainly resented the Imperial army at the moment, but she had little sympathy for the rebellion of a people she did not know. Ethne was a Breton from a little port town in Alcaire, and she had lived in Cyrodiil for several years until her latest employer, an old healer by the name of Gaius Mellitus, had died, setting her adrift. She had come north in search of work, having heard a rumor that there might be an opening for someone with her skills at the White Phial in Windhelm, only to be held at the border and arrested on suspicion of being a spy for Ulfric Stormcloak, Jarl of Windhelm. No one listened to her protests that she was an innocent civilian. They stripped her of her possessions, left her in a damp, chilly cell at Fort Neugrad for days, and loaded her up one night with a convoy of rebels taken in ambush somewhere called Darkwater Crossing. She later learned this would have been on her way to Windhelm; perhaps the Imperials had feared she would tip off the rebels to their plan, with or without meaning to.

In any case, she was grateful to Ralof, and then to his sister, Gerdur, for helping her and giving her a safe place to rest after her ordeal. She was happy to be able to repay their kindness by carrying the news of Helgen's destruction and Riverwood's danger to Whiterun.

Gerdur set her up with decent clothes and food for the journey, plus enough gold for a meal and a bed in the city. For defense, Ethne had a rusty iron axe she'd taken in the flight from Helgen. She gave the Stormcloak armor to Ralof to take back to his friends, though, having no wish to be mistaken for a rebel again.

On the morning of her second day out from Riverwood, Ethne climbed up on a shelf of rock between the road and the White River to get her bearings, and she got her first look at the plains of Whiterun Hold: expansive fields of hardy green grass dotted with outcrops of granite and colorful flowers of all descriptions; the river flowing away in a shining ribbon to the northeast; stark, craggy mountains rising up all around; and directly north, a towering structure that had to be Dragonsreach, the palace of the jarl perched on its high hill. The scene was almost overwhelming in its grandeur. She had to stop and admire it. Everyone always spoke of Skyrim as a harsh land, frozen and unforgiving. Why did no one ever mention how lovely it was, too?

She couldn't stop for long, though. She hoped to reach the jarl before nightfall, and she would have to move quickly in order to make that goal.

By midday, she reached the crossroads where Gerdur had told her she must turn west rather than continue north across a tributary to the river. The road followed the tributary and led her past the Honingbrew Meadery. The richly sweet smell of fermenting honey filled the air. Honingbrew was famous even outside of Skyrim, and had Ethne been on an errand less urgent, she might have stopped by to visit, but that would have to wait for another day.

The shadows were beginning to grow long when she came to the walled border of a field full of maturing leeks and cabbages. Her eyes were on the road, avoiding the afternoon sun ahead of her, but her head jerked up at the sound of a deep, guttural roar and a crunch and snap of splintering wood.

There was a giant. A _giant_ , right in the middle of a cultivated field. Ethne stood stock-still, staring, her mouth gaping open. The towering creature bellowed again and swung its enormous bone club, throwing up a cloud of earth and destroying half a row of innocent vegetables.

Movement drew Ethne's eye, and she realized there were two people fighting the giant. One darted in and swung at it, his greatsword glinting in the sun, while the other drew back, keeping an eye on that deadly club.

Suddenly the giant flinched as though stung and turned to bellow at a third fighter: an archer, standing atop a wall behind the others, whose red hair shone like a halo of fire. The distraction provided by her shot gave the two fighters an opportunity to move in for twin hits. The man with the greatsword thrust high at the giant's belly while the smaller of the two, whom Ethne realized was a woman, hacked at its shin with her one-handed blade. They both scored it, but that only seemed to make it angrier. It bellowed in rage and lifted one great foot to stomp on the ground. Ethne felt the shock from yards away, and the two fighters stumbled.

Before she knew what she was doing, Ethne leaped over a low place in the field's stone wall and went running to help. With a wordless cry, she hewed at the back of the giant's leg with her war axe held in both hands. It was like striking a hardwood tree, and her arms went nearly numb; but she had at least nicked a tendon, and the giant staggered under the weight of its club, raised to strike. The two fighters scrambled out of range, and Ethne too dodged back.

Another arrow took the giant in the eye. It fell to its knees with a roar of agony, clutching its face. Ethne and the two warriors fell on it together, Ethne chopping at the back of its neck and the others stabbing for its heart. Finally, after several agonizing and bloody seconds, it fell still and moved no more.

The three of them stood panting, looking at each other curiously, but too winded to speak for the moment. The woman was young, twenty at the most, with short brown hair and light brown eyes. The lines of red paint at the corners of her eyes and below her mouth made her look fierce, but she seemed as surprised as she was elated by her shared victory. The man with the greatsword was something of a giant himself, tall and very broad of chest and shoulder, made even broader by the fur-lined spauldrons of his dark steel armor. His hair was long and dark, matted with sweat, and he had ragged circles of black warpaint around his eyes. These were a bright, icy blue, and he had a broad grin that Ethne found mildly unsettling.

The red-haired archer joined them and looked over the fallen giant with a satisfied air. "Well, that's taken care of." She had a pleasantly low voice, and she, too, wore warpaint: three streaks of dark blue woad across her face, as though something had clawed her. "Nice work, Ria," she said to the brunette; then she turned to Ethne. "You handled yourself well, too, stranger. You could make for a decent shield-sister."

"Thanks!" Ethne said, though she wasn't quite sure what the redhead meant. "I couldn't just stand there when he knocked your friends down."

"Certainly not," the woman said approvingly. "Any true warrior would relish the opportunity to take on a giant. That's why I'm here with my shield-siblings. The big oaf is Farkas. This is Ria. I'm Aela."

Aela held out her arm, and Ethne clasped it.

"Ethne Duval." She shook with the other two in turn. Farkas had a grip like a steel trap that numbed her hand all over again. She tried not to show it. "So . . . what does it mean, 'shield-sister'?"

"An outsider, eh? Never heard of the Companions?"

Ethne shook her head.

"An order of warriors. We are brothers and sisters in honor. And we show up to solve problems if the coin is good enough." Aela put her foot on the giant's back.

"You should come back to Jorrvaskr with us," Farkas said suddenly, making Ethne jump with his deep, gruff voice. "We'll be celebrating Ria's first giant tonight." He slapped the younger woman affectionately on the back, staggering her. "You helped, so you should be there, too. It'll be a lot of fun, and you can talk to Kodlak about joining up. You look strong. I'm sure he'll take you."

"Oh," Ethne said, a little taken aback by the offer. "I would love to . . . but I can't. I have to see the jarl. It's urgent—I've stopped here too long already."

"Ease up there, icebrain; you'll scare her off before she even gets to know us," Aela said, grinning. "Don't mind him," she told Ethne. "But you should come with us anyway. We're going the same direction, and we'll make sure the guards let you into the city. There's a crazy rumor about a dragon torching the countryside, and they've locked the gates to visitors. Personally, I think it's just an excuse to keep out the Imperials and the Stormcloaks without offending anyone."

"It's not just a rumor. It's true," Ethne said bleakly. "I was at Helgen two days ago. An enormous black dragon attacked, and destroyed the town. It breathed fire, just like in the stories, and it called burning rocks down from the sky." The deadly heat of the flames, the thick, choking smoke, the explosions and the screams came back to her. The hairs of her body stood on end. She shuddered hard and wrapped her arms around herself. "Mara's mercy, its _voice_ . . . it was like thunder." More than that, it had resonated inside her in a way she didn't understand. It felt almost like something on the edge of memory, just out of reach; something she yearned for even though it frightened her half out of her wits.

The Companions looked at her with new eyes after hearing her account.

"Gods, you're not making it up," said Aela. She looked troubled.

"You really saw a dragon?" The young woman, Ria, spoke for the first time. "Did you fight it?"

Ethne goggled at her. "What? No! I barely escaped it! One man and I made it to Riverwood. They wanted me to come and ask Jarl Balgruuf for protection for them."

"Then we won't waste any more time," Aela said. "Come on."

She took Ethne's forearm and tugged her into motion. The others fell in behind.

As they hurried up the road, now striding, now jogging, Aela turned to her with a question. "Tell me . . . in Helgen, did you happen to see a red-haired man, about the size of Farkas? He might have had a boy with him, or a narrow-faced woman."

Ethne shook her head, frowning. "I don't know, it all happened so fast. But . . . " Flashes of memory returned. She had noticed a boy as the carts rolled toward the town square. His father had sent him inside. Had he had red hair? Maybe. Then, later, as she was fleeing through fire and tumult, a boy again; his father, burned and dying, telling him to run. Imperial soldiers had escorted him away, hopefully to safety. She told Aela, "If I did see the man you're thinking of, he's dead. I'm sorry. Was he someone close to you?"

Aela scowled. "Not close, not for many years . . . but he was my brother. Torolf. He worked the lumber mill in Helgen with his wife, and they had a son, Haming. He'd be ten or eleven now, I think. Is he . . . ?"

"No—that is, I don't know for certain, but the man I saw, his son may have escaped. Some Imperial soldiers were protecting him last I saw."

"I see." She was silent for a moment, eyes cast down on the road ahead of her. "Thank you for telling me. If Haming's alive, I know where he'd go."

She didn't sound thrilled about it, but it wasn't Ethne's business, so she didn't inquire as to why.

They reached the winding approach to the gates of Whiterun. It was clearly designed with warfare in mind, exposing a potential enemy to attack on all sides, but the walls were old and crumbling, the rickety wooden towers hardly fit for birds to nest in. Ethne wasn't sure how much good these defenses would do against a determined army, let alone a living siege engine on the wing.

The gates to the city were painted in faded powder-blue and gold. Horse-head banners in the same colors hung to either side.

One of two guards in matching livery stepped forward and called out to Aela and the others as they approached. "Hail, Companions! Who's this with you? A new recruit?" He sounded suspicious, but it was hard to tell through the faceplate.

"A friend," said Aela, "with important news for the Jarl. Open up, Arne. I vouch for her." She clapped Ethne on the shoulder, not warmly, but confidently enough to sell the image.

"All right, Aela," said Arne, then addressed Ethne. "But don't go causing any trouble, outsider. We've got more than enough as it is."

He turned and unlocked the gates with an outsized iron key. It took both guards to force one of the leaves open—the wood had to be six inches thick. Ethne, Farkas, and Ria followed Aela inside, and the lock clanked shut behind them.

The Companions went on without pause, but Ethne fell behind, looking around at the city. The first sight that greeted her was the smithy on the south side of the street, with its facade as red as the coals of the forge in the light of sunset. A little farther along, to the north and above the street, was a tavern whose shingle depicted a frothy mug of ale over a hop flower and two ears of wheat.

Farkas noticed that she was no longer with them and dropped back beside her. "First time to Whiterun?" he inquired. When Ethne said it was, he went on. "That's the Drunken Huntsman. Don't stay there. It's all right if you're fancy, but the Bannered Mare is better. Come on. It's a long climb to the palace."

She did her best to stop gawking and keep up, but Whiterun was full of fascinating sights and sounds. They came to an open plaza surrounded by shops with a well in the center, clearly the heart of the city. The marketplace was lively with people closing shop and heading either home to their families or off to their watering hole of choice.

"See, that's the Mare up there," Farkas said, pointing to a large two-story building that lorded over the plaza from a higher place on the hillside. "When you're done talking to the Jarl, you can get a good, hot meal and a bed there. Tell Hulda the Companions sent you, and she'll treat you extra-nice."

"Thanks," Ethne said. It was heartfelt. She'd always heard that the Nords were a people as rough as their country, brutish and unfriendly to outsiders, but even this big, dangerous-looking warrior was proving that wrong.

Aela and Ria had gotten ahead again, and Aela turned to shout at them from a stairway leading to the next level of the city.

"Come on, Farkas! She's not here to see the sights!"

"Sorry!" he said, though he didn't seem quite sure whether he was saying it to Aela or Ethne.

"It's all right," Ethne said. "I'll be grateful if I have to find my way back here after dark."

They hurried to catch up again. The stair was ingeniously flanked with streams of running water, chuckling merrily over the rocks of their beds.

"This is the Wind District," Farkas told her when they reached the top. "Back there was the Plains District. It's mostly shops down there, and it's mostly houses up here. That's the Temple of Kynareth." He pointed northwest of a huge tree in the middle of the courtyard. The streams of water drew a circle around it. "Jorrvaskr's there." He pointed east, to an enormous hall with a roof that looked like an overturned boat, hung with shields all along its length. Warm light shone from within. "That's where we live. Us and the rest of the Companions."

"This is where we leave you," Aela said. "Just follow the stairs up to the palace; you can't miss it. Tell the guards what you told us, and you won't have any trouble. When you get inside, talk to Irileth, the housecarl. A Dark Elf; you can't miss her, either. Jarl Balgruuf can be a bit prickly, but he's an honorable man and he cares about his people. He'll be sure to hear you out."

"Thank you—all of you," Ethne said, and clasped their arms again. "I hope we meet again."

"You can always come by Jorrvaskr if you're interested in joining up," Aela said. "The life's not for everyone, but if you survived a dragon, you must have some strength in you. There's no better way to win honor and glory while earning a living, too. Think about it."

"I will."

Ethne watched them make their way up to their hall and for a moment really wished she were going with them. But no. She would deliver her message, spend the night at the inn, and in the morning she would start asking around for work that didn't come with such a high risk of death.

As Farkas had said, it was a long climb to the palace of Dragonsreach, and the stone steps were slippery with spray from twin waterfalls that spilled from fissures in the hillside into a deep pool below. Here, then, was the source of the streams below. Clever.

She kept on doggedly. At the top, she paused to slow her breathing and compose herself, then approached the palace guards.

"Halt!" cried one, a woman. "Who are you, and what business do you have here?"

"Ethne Duval of High Rock," she answered smartly. "I come bearing news from Helgen and a request for aid from Riverwood."

"Helgen? You were at Helgen?"

"I was. I saw what happened with my own eyes."

"Go, then. The Jarl will want to hear this."

The guard opened the door and ushered Ethne inside.

The long hall was dark in the fading light of dusk, and the central fire threw long, eerie shadows against the supporting pillars and the walls. The place felt even bigger on the inside than it had looked from below.

Ethne could hear the sounds of a conversation echoing from the far end of the hall as she climbed yet more stairs to the main level.

"My lord. Please. You have to listen. I only counsel caution. We cannot afford to act rashly in times like these. If the news from Helgen is true . . . well, there's no telling what it means."

The speaker was an anxious, mostly bald man with a Cyrodiilic accent. He stood beside the throne, in which lounged an imposing figure of a Nord with his yellow hair braided back from his face and his beard immaculately styled into a blunt cone. His rich clothes and the gold circlet on his brow, set with large gems, marked him as a lord, though his demeanor and manner of speech would have been enough without them.

"What would you have me do, then? Nothing?"

"My lord. Please. This is no time for rash action. I just think we need more information before we act. I just—"

"Who's this, then?" The Jarl fixed his gaze on Ethne.

She had crept as close as she dared to the dais and come up beside the head of the fire pit, in front of a hard-faced Dunmer woman who must be the Irileth of whom Aela had spoken. Ethne was no longer certain whom she should address, but Irileth solved the dilemma by marching toward her.

"You! Why do you interrupt a meeting between the Jarl and his steward?" Her voice was deep and melodious, like many Dunmer women, but there was nothing soothing about her. She fixed her ruby-red eyes on Ethne and glared such that Ethne was sure she would get a sword in the gut if she said the wrong thing.

"I . . ." Her voice broke. She swallowed and started again. "I beg your pardon, my lady, my lords. I have just come from Riverwood, bearing urgent news for the Jarl of Whiterun. Riverwood is in danger and calls for the Jarl's aid. Despite the late hour, I must humbly request an audience."

The housecarl looked as though she were about to say no, but the Jarl intervened.

"It's all right, Irileth. I want to hear what this woman has to say."

Irileth's mouth pressed into a thin line. "Very well. You may approach the Jarl. But _carefully_."

Ethne gave her a stiff bow and edged between her and the fire to stand before the throne.

Jarl Balgruuf leaned forward to peer at her more closely. "What's this about Riverwood being in danger?"

Ethne gulped again, though her mouth was dry. "My lord, I was at Helgen when the dragon attacked. When I last saw it, it was flying north. Gerdur is afraid that Riverwood might be next, and she asked me to bring you this news and her request for protection."

"Gerdur? Owns the lumber mill, if I'm not mistaken. Pillar of the community. Not prone to flights of fancy. . . . And you're sure Helgen was destroyed by a dragon? This wasn't some Stormcloak raid gone wrong?"

"No, my lord. Neither Men nor Mer could do what this thing did. It leveled the town—there's nothing left but rubble and ash." Again the horror of that day overtook her. She fought down the urge to vomit and held her balled hands stiffly at her sides lest she seem feeble before the Jarl.

However, he had turned to address his steward. "What do you say now, Proventus? Shall we continue to trust in the strength of our walls? Against a dragon?"

Irileth spoke up from his left. "My lord, we should send troops to Riverwood at once. It's in the most immediate danger, if that dragon is lurking in the mountains."

The steward, Proventus, argued back. "The Jarl of Falkreath will view that as a provocation! He'll assume we're preparing to join Ulfric's side and attack him."

Jarl Balgruuf raised a hand, cutting them off. "Enough! Irileth, send a detachment to Riverwood at once."

"Yes, my Jarl." She snapped off a precise bow and turned on her heel to go and give the orders.

"We should not . . ." muttered Proventus.

Balgruuf rounded on him angrily: "I'll not stand idly by while a dragon burns my hold and slaughters my people!"

"Y-yes, my Jarl," stammered Proventus. "If you'll excuse me, I'll return to my duties."

"That would be best," Balgruuf said stiffly. When the steward had gone, he turned to Ethne, who had stood like a statue throughout the exchange. "You there. Well done. You sought me out, on your own initiative. You've done Whiterun a service, and I won't forget it. Tell me your name."

She told him.

He nodded. "Ethne Duval, I will make you known to my household, and you will be allowed to select a reward from my armory. A small token of my esteem."

"You are generous." She hesitated. The Jarl was giving her a speculative look that she couldn't interpret. "Will that be all, my lord?"

It seemed not. "There is another thing you could do for me. Suitable for someone of your particular talents, perhaps. Come, let's go find Farengar, my court wizard. He's been looking into a matter related to these dragons and . . . rumors of dragons.

"Yes, my lord." She tried not to let her frustration tell in her voice. She was tired, thirsty, and heartsick, and wanted nothing more than to find her way back to the Bannered Mare and shut out the world for the night. And just what did this jarl think her "particular talents" were? The fact that she had seen a dragon and escaped with most of the skin on her back didn't make her some kind of expert.

However, one did not argue with royalty, so she held her tongue and followed him to a laboratory off the east side of the greathall.

"I'll introduce you to Farengar," Jarl Balgruuf said softly. "He can be a bit . . . difficult. Mages, you know."

She did know, having spent more than enough time around them as a youth. Every child in High Rock was routinely tested for magical ability and trained accordingly—at least as far as their parents could afford, and Ethne's mercantile father could afford quite a bit. Unfortunately, she had never had the slightest aptitude, despite the claims of numerous teachers that she had a great untapped potential. True or not, her simplest spells always fizzled in seconds, no matter how she concentrated, and they had finally allowed her to give up and pursue other interests.

Farengar's room was the typical cluttered mess Ethne associated with serious wizards: a table covered in books, papers, a map, and a scattering of small soul gems and other materials; an alchemy array; an enchanting table; shelves and shelves of more books, potions, reagents, and Divines knew what else. The man himself, a hatchet-faced Nord in blue robes, stood at the table, poring over one of his books, and didn't look up until the Jarl said his name.

"Farengar, I think I've found someone who can help you with your project. Go ahead and fill her in on all the details."

"Hmm? What? Project?" Farengar had apparently been lost in his research and took a moment to come back to Nirn. He blinked owlishly at Ethne. "Oh, yes, the Jarl must be referring to my research into dragons. Yes, I could use someone to fetch something for me. Well, when I say fetch, I really mean delve into a dangerous ruin in search of an ancient artifact that may or may not actually be there."

Ethne's heart sank. She was in no way prepared for a treasure-hunting expedition to gods-knew-where, and she had sworn she was done with this sort of thing when she settled down to keep shop for old Gaius. She tried to think of a polite way to say no, she wasn't the woman they wanted, but she couldn't. This was work, a voice in the back of her mind told her. Better, it would put her in a jarl's good graces, and that could only be a good thing in the long run.

And, if she were honest with herself, she had to admit she was curious. "All right, tell me more. What does this have to do with dragons?"

Farengar seemed pleased with her response. "Ah, no mere brute mercenary, but a thinker—perhaps even a scholar?" He didn't give her a chance to respond; his passion carried him on, pacing back and forth behind his table. "You see, when the stories of dragons began to circulate, many dismissed them as mere fantasies, rumors. Impossibilities. One sure mark of a fool is to dismiss anything that falls outside his experience as being impossible. But I began to search for information about dragons—where had they gone all those years ago? And where were they coming from?"

Ethne wanted to know that herself. "And you found something? This artifact?"

"Yes. I, ah, learned of a certain stone tablet said to be housed in Bleak Falls Barrow: a 'Dragonstone', said to contain a map of dragon burial sites. Your task is to go to Bleak Falls Barrow, find this tablet—no doubt interred in the main chamber—and bring it to me. Simplicity itself."

"Right." If that was a joke, the wizard had a rotten sense of humor. The way he avoided her eyes when he said "learned" was not particularly heartening, either. "And how do I get to—wait. Bleak Falls? I know that place." Ralof had pointed it out to her during their flight to Riverwood; said it gave him the chills.

She turned to the Jarl, who had stood quietly observing the exchange. "My lord, I will fetch this Dragonstone, but, though I hate to beg favors, I lost everything I owned in Helgen." Not quite the truth, but close enough to avoid questions that would make everyone uncomfortable. "If I am to do this, I will need proper gear, food, supplies . . . "

Balgruuf gave her a hard, measuring look, and then the barest nod. "If you succeed in this, Whiterun will be in your debt. I will see that you have gold enough for what you need. Consider it a down payment on your reward, and do not fail."

He didn't need to say what would happen if she did: she'd be a dead woman, one way or another.

"I won't," said Ethne. "Thank you, my lord."

"Good. Now, it is late, and you have come a long way. Go, rest, and come back in the morning. My steward, Proventus, will see to your needs."

"Yes, my lord. Thank you. Goodnight." She bowed to him and, less deeply, to Farengar, then hurried out.

The Jarl's voice followed her into the hall: "This is a priority now, Farengar. Anything we can use to fight this dragon, or dragons. We need it, quickly. Before it's too late."

Farengar replied: "Of course, Jarl Balgruuf. You seem to have found me an able assistant. I'm sure she will prove most useful."

 _She had better_ , Ethne thought, smiling grimly to herself.

It was challenging to get around Whiterun in the dark with all its stairs and levels, and seeing Jorrvaskr again, its windows glowing brightly and smoke rising from the cookfires within, almost made her reverse her decision to decline Farkas' invitation. A drink and a song or two would be just the way to get fired up before a dangerous quest. But she really had no business there, and she needed to rest, not stay up carousing.

Thanks to the tour she'd received earlier, she made it to the Bannered Mare without getting lost or breaking her neck. As soon as she stepped through the door, she wondered whether she were really any better off here than up at the mead hall. The common room was full of people, mostly locals by the sameness of them: on benches around the central fire, at the bar, at tables in the corners. Over the hum of conversation, a bard played a lilting melody on a horn flute.

The locals were curious about her, but she kept her conversation brief and polite, and they soon got bored and left her alone. The innkeeper, an officious middle-aged woman named Hulda, noticed her quickly enough and set her up with a frothy ale and a bowl of rich venison stew. Ethne hadn't realized how hungry she was until she smelled it, and then she could think of nothing else. She tucked in gratefully and was not disappointed. The meat was tender and not too gamy, the large chunks of potato dissolved creamily on her tongue, and the gravy was well seasoned with pepper and some other spices that reminded her of Hammerfell.

She went to bed happy and roused when the sun, slanting through narrow slats in the roof, fell on her face. Hulda fed her a complimentary breakfast of new bread and honey with a small pot of heather tea, and so she got a better start to the day than she had ever hoped for.

She made her way back up to the palace with a spring in her step, thinking that this adventure wasn't such a bad idea after all. She was alive; she'd landed on her feet after a harrowing near-death experience, and she had a patron in an important lord who, if she pleased him this time, might have further use for her in the future.

And she liked his city. Whiterun was impressive and a little daunting in twilight. In the fresh light of morning, its true character shone through. It was an ancient settlement, and it showed in the worn cobblestones underfoot and the darkened wood of the buildings, but it was also a well-kept one. The water channeled so cleverly from its source below the palace looked fresh and pure where it flowed in its sparkling courses above-ground, but Ethne suspected that there were below-ground sewers, too, which would account for the cleanliness of the streets. The doors of shops and houses were painted in cheerful hues, and there wasn't a moldy bit of thatch or missing shingle to be seen. Grasses and flowers grew wherever they could find purchase on the rocky bones of the hill, giving lively color to the whole place. Maybe it wasn't as grand as the stone capitals of High Rock and Cyrodiil, but it was by no means unsophisticated, and she found it comfortable, like a favorite old chair that had shaped itself to the contours of its owner.

Balgruuf's household was just finishing breakfast when she arrived in the greathall. He himself had already taken his place on the throne and was engaged in conversation with Irileth, Proventus, and a man in Imperial armor whom she didn't recognize: fairly mundane talk of agendas, stores, soldiers, and gold. The watchful housecarl spotted her first and pinned her where she was with a sharp look, then bent to the Jarl's ear.

Balgruuf nodded and shifted in his seat to face Ethne more directly. "You are prompt. Good. I trust you remember my steward, Proventus Avenicci." He gestured to the balding Imperial. "He will escort you first to the armory. You may take any spare piece of armor that suits you and whatever gear you think will be of use in your quest. If there is anything you require that Dragonsreach cannot provide, Proventus will purchase it for you, within reason."

Ethne noticed the pinched look on the steward's face and guessed that he wasn't too happy about this order. She couldn't blame him. A steward's job was to take greater care with his master's money than the master himself. If he was any good, spending always went against the grain.

"I understand, my lord," she said.

Proventus beckoned her impatiently and led her through the halls of the palace. "Come on, let's get this over with. I have more important things to do than take the Jarl's new pet for a walk."

Behind him, Ethne rolled her eyes. "Yes, my lord steward."

He looked at her sharply over his shoulder. She looked up curiously, as though wondering what he wanted, and he hurried on with a huff.

Fortunately, the palace stores held most of what she needed: a decent if battered steel cuirass and gauntlets from the armory; stained boots with good, thick soles; a warm blanket, only slightly moth-eaten; a patched change of clothes; a spare flint and steel striker; a small iron pot; a sturdy rope and sheet of canvas; a pair of minor healing potions for emergencies; a stout leather backpack to carry it all in.

Dragonsreach did not have travelers' food on hand, though. For that and a few other odds and ends she had learned never to travel without, they went out into the city.

Proventus cheered up markedly in the sunlight; perhaps he didn't get out much. Ethne made a simple passing remark about how nice the waterfalls were, and he was off to the races, telling her everything he knew about the history of Whiterun. Parts were quite fascinating, and she wished he would slow down a bit. As it was, she felt sure she wouldn't remember half of it.

He appreciated a receptive audience, though, and they managed to end the excursion on friendly terms with each other. He wished her well on her endeavor and even pressed a few extra coins into her palm, for whatever came up. "The Jarl has many cares," he said. "If this Dragonstone eases his mind, you'll have my gratitude. Good luck."

She thanked him for everything and, having no preparations left to make, set off back to Riverwood.


	2. Bleak Falls Barrow

Language warning: Serious swearing starts this chapter. 

* * *

Gerdur was surprised to see her again, but happy that her appeal to Jarl Balgruuf had been successful. The detachment from Whiterun had arrived a day ahead of Ethne, and the townsfolk felt more at ease.

Most of them, anyway. The guards hadn't been there in time to stop bandits from robbing the Riverwood Trader of an invaluable gold ornament, as Ethne learned when she stopped in to resupply herself with fresh food. Just her luck, they were most likely holed up at Bleak Falls Barrow.

Bandits didn't scare her, though. She got some helpful directions from the shopkeeper's sister, who probably would have gone with her if both Ethne and the woman's brother hadn't been against it, and went on her way.

Bleak Falls Barrow had been impressive from a distance, the high, pointed arches of its portico dominating the face of the mountain on which it was built. Up close, the sense of weight supported by those ancient stones made Ethne's breath catch in her throat. The carved guardians perched atop the arches might have been dragons, or eagles, or some beast she had never even heard of; they were pitted and worn down by the elements, yet they still watched the approaches to the tomb with stern, reproachful eyes, warning all who would enter to be wary.

They had not succeeded in keeping the bandits away. Ethne had marked their tracks as she came up the path. She was no tracker, but the disturbance to the ground was obvious. There were several of them, she guessed, not at all bothering to conceal their passage. They must have thought no one would follow them up here, and they would have been right if her mission from Farengar had taken her anywhere else. She didn't relish a confrontation, but one way or another, she would have to get past them.

It had taken her most of the day to climb up to the barrow from Riverwood, and the sun setting behind the mountain cast the portico in shadow. It was a blessing: her approach up the broad north stair was hidden, and the bandits on guard lit torches, telling her exactly where they were. There were two at the doors to the interior, and one, armed with a bow, on a short promontory jutting out to the east. The latter would be the first to see her if he happened to look in the right direction.

She decided to save him the trouble. "Hey! You there!"

The bandit spun around, swinging his torch wildly in his surprise. "What? Who's there?"

Ethne reached the top of the stair and raised her arms to show she wasn't holding her weapon. "I don't want trouble. Let's talk."

"Are you crazy?" The bandit got off the promontory and came toward her, dropping his torch to free up his hands. "Get out of here! This is no place for a lost little girl!"

"I'm not lost," Ethne said, choosing not to dignify the rest with a response. Slowly and deliberately, she dropped her pack and loosened her axe to show she meant business. "I'm here to enter the barrow and reclaim what your lot stole from the Riverwood Trader, and I'd rather not have to kill you all to do it. Are you here for yourselves, or someone else? Is it worth your arm, or your head?"

She hoped they, like most bandits, would be self-centered enough not to want to risk their skins for the dubious chance of profiting off any one job. Unfortunately, she didn't cut a very impressive figure in her battered second-hand armor, and they didn't take her seriously. The first man laughed at her, and she could hear the other two joining in from the landing above.

"Tell you what," said the first man. "I'm gonna give you one last chance to turn around and walk away from here, and since I'm feeling gentleman-like, I'll even promise not to shoot you in the back. How's that for fair?"

Ethne sighed. "Damn it. I tried."

She drew her axe and charged with a yell. The man was startled, and he couldn't draw his bow or drop it for another weapon fast enough. He tried to block her swing, but the axe chopped right through the simple wood staff and bit down through his leather armor into his shoulder. Ethne felt the impact of the old iron blade with his collarbone. He screamed in rage and swung at her with his other arm, but his fist was nothing to the steel of her cuirass. She ripped the axe out of his shoulder and hewed at his neck. The blade wasn't good enough to go all the way through, but she hit the major blood vessels and windpipe. His cries were cut off, and he dropped, gurgling, to the ground.

Ethne whirled around. The other two bandits had come running when she attacked, and now they leaped down the stairs to her level, swords drawn.

"Damn it," Ethne said again. In a glance, she picked her first opponent: a younger-looking man in wholly inadequate armor that left his torso mostly bare but for a single spauldron above his sword-arm and a round plate over his heart.

She looked him in the eyes and rushed him. He had probably never been in a real fight in his life, and he came to a staggering halt, sword forgotten at his side. Ethne turned sideways and slammed her elbow into the soft spot below his sternum, knocking him down to the stairs. He lay there wheezing, his wind knocked out.

"Stay down!" she barked, and turned to meet his partner.

This one was a Bosmer woman with the wild look of someone willing to kill. Ethne had to raise her axe quickly to stop the elf's sword, and she grunted at the shock down her arms.

"You never should have come here," the elf snarled. She jogged back and swung again fast; the blade clanged against Ethne's breastplate.

Ethne dodged the next slash and feinted right, then drove left at the bandit's off-side. The elf belatedly turned her sword to block, but her grip was awkward and weak. Ethne brought her axe down hard, low on the blade, and knocked it out of her hand. The elf was quick, and she managed to whirl away from Ethne's next blow, taking only a glancing cut to her arm, but she was finished and she knew it.

"Enough! I surrender!" she cried, hands raised to protect her head.

Ethne watched her warily. "You'll take the boy and leave?"

The elf glared at her with nothing but hate. "Yes!" she spat. "Spare us and you'll never see us again."

"Fine." Ethne marginally lowered her axe.

The elf watched her a moment more, then slunk off to pick up the young man. She had one last remark for her enemy: "I hope the skeevers feast on your entrails."

"Worse than skeevers have tried," Ethne replied, annoyed. "And thanks for the warning!"

She watched the two bandits limp away down the north stair. Once they were well out of sight, she picked up her pack and made her way up to the entrance of the barrow. The ancient ebony doors were wrought with images of dragons and every spare inch was decorated with spirals and crosshatching. They were huge, imposing, and heavy, but still moved with relative ease, and she was able to slip inside with a minimum of noise.

The interior was not as stuffy as she expected an old tomb to be. Light and air penetrated the gloom through large openings in the ceiling. Some were the result of structural collapse, and their stones lay in piles tumbled across the floor, but some were apparently by design: pillars rose through them to support the largest of the arches she had seen from the outside. Moss grew along cracks in the stone floor where rain would gather.

She could smell smoke and hear voices, faint and echoing from the other end of the long chamber. Hoping to get the drop on them, she moved as quietly as she could through the hall, keeping a central pillar between her and them. The Bosmer hadn't been kidding about the skeevers: Ethne almost gave herself away when she stumbled over one, dead, along with several others and two unlucky bandits who had been bitten fatally in the neck and groin. These people really had no idea what they were doing.

Creeping closer, she made out a Nord man's voice: "The dark elf wants to go on ahead, let him. Better than us risking our necks."

A woman answered: "What if Arvel doesn't come back? I want my share from that claw!"

"Just shut it and keep an eye out for trouble."

Good advice, Ethne thought, but too late. "Trouble's already here," she said, stepping out from behind the pillar and into the circle of their firelight.

"What the—?"

Two men and a woman scrambled to their feet and reached for their weapons. Ethne cursed to herself; she'd only heard two.

"Your friends outside are dead or fled," she told them. "Which will it be for you?"

"Oh no, you're not taking our treasure!" the woman cried. "Kill her!"

She attacked, but her weapon was only a dagger. Ethne side-stepped her lunge and bashed her over the head with the side of her axe. She dropped and stayed down.

The bigger of the two men charged next. He wielded a warhammer, and he was clearly strong enough to do some serious damage with it, but he was slow: all bulk, no finesse. Ethne dodged his first two swings, taking the measure of him, and then rushed under his guard and hacked into his knee. He fell with a cry of agony, clutching the wound, and Ethne finished him off.

The third bandit was smarter. Once he saw how the fight was going, he turned and ran off down a tunnel leading deeper into the barrow. Ethne swore and chased after him. The bastard was quick, and the tunnel was poorly lit with dying braziers. She could have turned an ankle on a loose stone or uneven step at any moment, but she couldn't let him escape to warn Arvel, whoever he was. She pushed herself, and she almost caught up to him when he reached a chamber whose exit was barred by an iron gate. He pulled a lever in the middle of the floor—and shuddered, struck by a barrage of arrows fired by hidden mechanisms in the walls. He fell dead.

Ethne skidded to a halt and stood panting, looking around the room for a clue to understanding what had just happened. The bandit had expected the lever to open the gate, but it was trapped. What went wrong?

To the left were three alcoves set into the wall, each containing a pillar depicting a stylized animal figure. Above the gate were similar figures, set into the open mouths of graven stone heads. There should have been three, but the middle head had fallen to the ground, and someone had rolled it over, away from the gate, until its face was upright. It held the figure of a snake. The other two, left and right respectively, were a snake and a whale.

Three pillars, three heads. Surely it couldn't be that simple?

There was nothing for it but to give it a try. Ethne found that the pillars rotated easily, and she turned them until they matched the heads: snake, snake, whale.

She approached the lever cautiously. Every instinct was screaming at her that it couldn't be this easy, she was going to be shot to death if she pulled that thing, but try as she might, she could come up with no other solution. She took a deep breath, pulled as quickly as she could, and leaped back over the body of the dead bandit, throwing her arms over her head.

After a few moments, she had to admit she wasn't dead. There had been noise, but no arrows pierced her. She lowered her arms and found the gate standing open, her way forward clear.

"Huh!" she said aloud. "Rough luck, mate," she added to the bandit. "You should've run the other way." She went through his pockets and turned up a handful of coins, which she would spend on the honest businesses of Skyrim and thus redeem the distasteful act.

Ethne found a corresponding lever on the other side of the gate, and she got to thinking about how it had come to be locked. This Arvel character, perhaps, really didn't intend to share with his fellows, and didn't mind if he got them killed. She disliked him already. Even bandit scum weren't usually that scummy to their partners.

Going on, she descended a spiral staircase with more dead skeevers at the bottom. The light was even worse in this lower level. Ethne lit a torch from one of the failing braziers, and even so, she found herself running afoul of thick cobwebs that clung to her face and hands. This was bad. Whatever made these had made them recently, and Ethne was almost certain to meet it. Though she searched carefully for an alternative path, she found only dead ends, and had to backtrack to an intersecting hallway filled with webbing that could only be parted by the blade of her axe.

While slicing her way through, she stumbled over an old, empty urn and cursed the sudden noise.

From the depths beyond came a voice: "Is . . . is someone coming? Is that you, Harknir? Bjorn? Soling? I know I ran ahead with the claw, but I need help!"

That must be Arvel. What slime, to abandon his friends behind a trapped gate and yet still try to sponge off their loyalty in a pinch. Ethne was glad he was in trouble; it would make getting the claw off him much easier.

She cut through a final layer of webbing and emerged into a large chamber with a grate in the floor. The whole room was lined with webs, and silk sacs hung suspended from the ceiling. Most were small, skeever-sized, but one or two were larger. Ethne didn't like to think about those.

"Hey! Over here!" Arvel called. "Get me out of here!"

It took a moment to spot him: he was trussed up in the only other exit from the chamber, on the opposite side from Ethne, and her torchlight barely reached that far.

She started toward him, and he screamed.

" _Ah, kill it! Kill it!_ "

An absolutely enormous spider dropped from a hole in the ceiling, almost on top of Ethne, and she screamed, too. The thing lashed out at her with its forelegs, trying to trip her, and she leaped away in a shambles, barely keeping her feet. She scrambled pell-mell back through the door, barely avoiding a stream of venom spat from the spider's fangs. Its clawed feet scratched at her through the doorway, but its body was too large to fit through.

Ethne stood panting behind the wall on the other side. Her mind raced. She'd seen giant spiders before, they were ubiquitous in the dark, forgotten places of Tamriel, but this was a particularly beastly specimen, with a corpse-white body, huge spiny mandibles, and black, dripping fangs. This thing must have engorged itself on the vital fluids of the unfortunate victims in the sacs, and Arvel was still alive because he was being saved up for later. Even a rat like him didn't deserve agony like that.

She came back swinging and smashed her axe into the spider's face, if it could be said to have one. One of its eyes was crushed and oozed a sickly greenish fluid. The creature hissed in pain and withdrew from the doorway.

Ethne followed, but she didn't go far from the door. "Come on, ugly, come and get a piece of me!"

The spider hesitated to chase her—it had a full belly, and this prey had already cost it an eye. Ethne dared to get close enough to strike at one of its legs and danced back, out of range. That did the trick. Ethne was an annoyance, and she would die for it if the spider had its way. She retreated back through the door, and the spider pursued, thrusting its legs through after her, trying to snare her with its claws. Ethne hacked one off, then another. The creature withdrew again, hissing and clacking its mandibles in fury.

Ethne followed. With two of the beast's main weapons disabled, she felt confident enough to take it head-on. All she had to do was avoid its venomous fangs. With Arvel shrieking at her to keep it away from him, kill it, save him, she ran circles around it, randomly switching directions to confuse it, and at every opportunity she cut into its swollen abdomen.

Its hide was old and tough, and didn't easily part. Ethne felt herself losing strength. It was late, she had spent all day climbing and the last hour fighting and running, she had recently been a prisoner, and she was not used to this anymore.

She tripped on the grating in the floor, and thought it was all over. The spider leaped on her, fangs raised to pierce her. At the last second, she unfroze, tossed her torch aside, and rolled under it. Its fangs snagged on the iron bars of the grate. Ethne looked up and saw its belly above her. She struck, struck, and struck again, and finally a tear opened its innermost membrane, spilling its guts. Ethne was coated in gunk. Gagging on the stench, she crawled away. The spider shuddered and collapsed.

"Is it over?" Arvel called. "Is it dead?"

Ethne cautiously picked up her torch and went for a closer look. The thing didn't even twitch when she put the fire up to its eyes. "It's dead," she answered.

The bandit was overjoyed. "You did it! You killed it! Now cut me down, before anything else shows up!"

"First things first." Ethne approached him. He was well-muscled for an elf, with a typically long, narrow face, and he'd affected a pointy mustache that made him look like the rat she already thought he was. "The claw," she demanded.

He nodded, constrained though he was by his silken prison. "Yes, the claw. I know how it works. The claw, the markings, the door in the Hall of Stories. I know how they all fit together!"

Ethne had no idea what he was talking about. "Is that why you stole it? Some ancient puzzle?"

More nodding. "Help me down, and I'll show you. You won't believe the power the Nords have hidden there."

Power? That was a new one. Most lower-order dungeon delvers were after gold and jewels, like Arvel's friend Soling.

"Here's the problem," Ethne said. "I don't trust you. I noticed you ditched your friends and reset that trapped gate behind you. One of them died to that. Why shouldn't I just kill you now and take the claw off your corpse?"

"Oh, but you have to help me!" he cried, struggling ineffectively against the web. "You'll never get through the tomb on your own, and you don't know the secret of the door. You need me!"

"I've made it this far," she argued, but unfortunately, he had a point. She was tired, and she didn't know how much farther she had to go or what dangers she might have to face on the way. Even an untrustworthy ally might be better than none. She sighed. "All right, look. I'm here for the claw and some old artifact which I'm sure is of no interest to anyone but a scholar. You help me and let me have what I'm after, and you can keep any other valuables we find. That's the deal. Got it?"

"Yes, of course, my friend. Very fair. Now please, get me out of this!"

Ethne couldn't help but notice that he looked anywhere except her eyes when he talked. She considered "accidentally" chopping off one of his hands as she began cutting through the web—she was pretty sure that was still the punishment for thieving in some places; it would be fitting—but that would rather defeat the purpose of keeping him around at all.

"It's coming loose, I can feel it," Arvel said. She sliced through a thick tangle of webbing, and his weight did the rest. He dropped to his feet, a little unsteady at first, but he quickly regained his balance and tore away tufts of silk still clinging to his body. "Sweet breath of Arkay, thank you."

"Save it," Ethne snapped. "You can show me how grateful you are by not fucking with me. Do you have a torch?"

"I did, until . . . " He looked around the room and spotted it. "Ah, there!"

She re-lit it for him, and he beckoned her to follow him through the passage that had lately had him as its door. She was happy enough to let him go first, so she could keep an eye on him.

They passed through an odd chamber containing some sort of altar on which sat several urns. Arvel didn't hesitate to rummage through these for loot, and as far as Ethne was concerned, he was welcome to it. She was unnerved by the combination of soul gem sconces beside the altar and spiraling grooves carved into the floor, leading from the altar to grates in the wall, which surely could not have been used for anything wholesome. She wasn't interested in touching any of it.

Beyond the chamber was a hallway lined with niches where the remains of ancient Nords lay. Some were wrapped from head to toe in yellowed linen; others had rotted away to skeletons. Some, however, were in remarkably good shape for corpses, the techniques of their embalmers aided, perhaps, by the cold, dry air down here. The years had taken their toll nonetheless. Their skins had withered to gray leather that cleaved to their bones, leaving dark hollows where their organs had been removed and their flesh had desiccated. Some were fully armed and armored, some had only tattered rags to cover them, some had nothing at all. All were eyeless and noseless, and they stank faintly of decay and whatever alchemical concoction had been used to slow it.

"Draugr," Arvel whispered. "They wake up sometimes. We wouldn't want that."

The hair on the back of Ethne's neck stood up. "No."

They crept through the hallway as quietly as they could, and nothing stirred.

Not until they reached the next large, pillared chamber. As their torches flickered across the niches, cold, blue pinpricks of light flared in the eyes of some of the corpses. They growled. They moved.

And that was when Arvel chose to break faith with her. Barely ten minutes had passed.

"Sorry, 'friend', but I have a treasure to get to." He took off running across the chamber. "I'm too swift for you!"

He might have meant the last remark for Ethne or the draugr, or both; it didn't matter. He was gone, and one of the undead was already on its feet and lurching toward her with a greatsword raised to strike.

"Shit!" Ethne raised her axe to parry. "Arvel, you prick, I saved your life!" She turned the sword aside and slid away from her attacker.

There was a clang and scream in the darkness, but Ethne had no time to take notice. There was another draugr coming up on her right with a cruel-looking war axe. This one was slower than the first, though. Ethne hacked its weapon-arm off at the elbow. Then the first one was on her left again, and without thinking, she lunged at its face with her torch.

This turned out to be shockingly effective. The draugr's head lit up like a match, and the rest of it followed. It snarled in rage and swung its sword at her, striking her cuirass across the ribs, but then it staggered and fell, crumbling to stinking ash.

The second draugr grabbed her shoulder with its remaining hand, grunting in some guttural language that Ethne didn't understand, but that froze her blood regardless. She wrenched away from it and stuck her torch into its hollow abdomen, and it, too, blazed up.

Ethne choked and wretched on the chemical fumes, but through her discomfort was a way forward. More draugr attacked her, some quite fiercely. She blocked their weapons with her axe or let them strike her cuirass, just so long as she got close enough to set them on fire. The flames consumed them one by one. Finally, only Ethne remained standing, winded, but remarkably unharmed.

The chamber had filled with smoke, and she hurried through it; but when the next passage came in view, she remembered Arvel and the scream she had heard when the fight began. What had happened to him?

She discovered his body crumpled in a pool of blood against the left-hand wall, pierced with many wounds. A little further searching revealed the mechanism of his undoing: another trap, this time a trick stone in the floor that triggered a spiked wall. Arvel the Swift had been in too much of a hurry to see it. The gods had a morbid sense of humor.

Gingerly, trying to avoid getting his blood on her hands, she detached a large pouch from his belt and checked inside. There was the golden claw, gleaming in the torchlight. To her surprise, she also found a small journal, the pages simply stitched to the inside of a leather cover. The most recent entry proved interesting:

 _My fingers are trembling. The Golden Claw is finally in my hands, and with it, the power of the ancient Nordic heroes. That fool Lucan Valerius had no idea that his favorite store decoration was actually the key to Bleak Falls Barrow._

 _Now I just need to get to the Hall of Stories and unlock the door. The legend says there is a test that the Nords put in place to keep the unworthy away, but that "When you have the golden claw, the solution is in the palm of your hands."_

So he had been telling the truth about that, or at least what he believed to be the truth. She put the book back and decided to have a look at this claw. It was gold, all right: heavy for its size, battered, but completely untarnished, despite being as old as this barrow. On its palm were set three discs bearing more animal signs: bear, moth, and owl. No doubt the solution to another puzzle like the one in the lever room.

Intrigued, she belted the pouch to her own waist and set off again, keeping an eye out for more traps or draugr.

She found both: first three draugr, quickly dispatched with fire as soon as she saw them stirring, then a nasty swinging blade trap that gave her serious pause. How in Oblivion had a thing like this not rusted up centuries ago? Magic? She'd never heard of a spell that could eternally lubricate a metal joint, but then, she'd never heard of lots of things.

It took several minutes of watching the blades, counting the seconds between each swing, before she worked up the nerve to make a dash for the other side. She barely made it. The last blade clipped her back as she passed and sent her spinning to the ground. Her cuirass protected her, but she almost lost her torch as she flung out her left arm to catch herself. Mercifully, it stayed lit—and showed her the pull-chain to shut down the blades. Great. Why couldn't there have been one of those on the other side?

She shut it off anyway, just in case she had to come back this way later, and pressed on through a series of winding tunnels. More draugr awakened at her approach, stepping down from alcoves where they had stood upright, as though on guard. These, too, fell to her axe and flames, but the first one nearly took her down with them when his burning body collapsed into an oil slick on the floor. A _fresh_ oil slick, and how, _how_ was that possible? The sudden explosion of heat was intense enough to take her breath away, and her legs were burned through her simple cotton trousers. Her first healing potion went toward recovering from that ordeal. She hoped she wouldn't need the second one, but she was no longer certain of anything.

On top of bizarrely well maintained traps and eerily talkative undead monsters, she couldn't make out any sort of order to the architecture of this place. It seemed like the builders had just dug in whatever direction they felt like, with no plan other than onward and downward, as they needed more spaces for bodies. Her impression of aimlessness was compounded when she ran into a cave-in and found that her only way forward was through a metal gate that allowed an underground stream to pass through it. It opened by a pull-chain, allowing her to pass through, too. She followed the stream through a natural cavern, and where the stream tumbled over a ledge too high to jump down, she saw a bridge over the course of the water below, guarded by a draugr. That meant this place was connected to the barrow, and _that_ meant someone had designed it this way deliberately, for reasons completely ineffable to Ethne. The ancient Nords were a very strange folk.

She found her way down to the bridge easily enough and got a very welcome breath of fresh air. The bridge was at the bottom of a deep crevasse, open to the night sky. It was cloudy, and a gentle rain drizzled down. This draugr wouldn't catch fire so easily, so she goaded him into charging at her. When he got close enough, she lowered her shoulder, rammed into him, and knocked him into the rushing water below. Problem solved.

There was a ramp leading down to the bottom of the crevasse, but Ethne did not have the energy for any diversions. She kept on straight through the next more-or-less natural passage, which finally led her back to the now-familiar curved stone tunnels of the ancient Nordic tomb. Beyond a large antechamber and a pair of iron-enforced wooden doors, she found a grander, more important-looking section of the barrow, and this was _already lit_. Her first sight was an enormous brazier set about with what she was now sure were stylized dragon heads, and past it, candles and smaller braziers burned on stands along the walls.

She had to get past another fucking blade trap, and this time, having learned from the first, she took it slowly, darting past each razor-sharp pendulum in turn. In this way, she got through unscathed, only to find herself in a lantern-lit room crawling with draugr that seemed to have been awake even before she got there. The impossible thought struck her that _they_ must be the ones maintaining the traps, lighting the candles—and spilling lamp oil.

This time she saw it before she stepped in it, and it was a good thing, too. The draugr down here were livelier than any she'd encountered before, and looked like they meant to give her a mean fight. As they ran toward her, she crouched, touched her torch to the floor, and leaped back, throwing a protective arm across her eyes as it blazed up. The conflagration was short-lived, but it was enough to destroy the first wave of draugr, and she did for the rest herself, though not without taking a serious beating from one who had the sense to get behind her and hit her with a warhammer. That put a dent the size of a man's fist in her backplate, knocking Ethne to her knees and the wind from her lungs. Even as she coughed and gasped to get her breath back, she flung herself at the draugr and fired him up before he could cave in her skull. He was the last.

Really the last. The upper level of the chamber was clear, since everyone up there had come running down to confront her. Across a suspended walkway over the chamber floor, through a small room and past another set of doors, and she found herself in a long, low vault, lit with braziers, that she knew immediately must be the Hall of Stories.

Between the ribs of the vault were carved stone reliefs depicting what Ethne assumed were religious scenes. She couldn't interpret them, but each panel contained a central figure, each with its own animal totem above. She made out a moth-woman, a fox-man, an owl-man, and a dragon-man. Who they were and what their totems symbolized, she had no idea, but the room filled her with awe nonetheless. There was a sort of subliminal hum in the air, like the echo of voices chanting rites of worship. Probably just the crackle of the coals and air whistling through tiny fissures in the walls, but then again, maybe not.

At the end of the vault was the door, and it was not like anything Ethne had ever seen before. It appeared solid, with no hinges or handles she could see. There were three concentric arches built into it, each bearing an animal roundel, with a disc in the center, pierced with three holes. Well, she could guess what fit there. Arvel had described the golden claw as a key, and she saw now that the door was indeed a puzzle. Absurdly simple if only you had the solution, which she did. The arches, actually rings, turned easily, and she matched their totems to the ones on the palm of the claw: bear, moth, owl. The nails of the claw fit neatly into the slots in the central disc. Gripping the claw by its turned-out wrist, she rotated it.

The door clanked, and shuddered, and sent dust cascading down on her. She staggered back, coughing and brushing herself down—and saw the door sink entirely into the floor.

The hum got louder.

No, she must be imagining things. She was exhausted, and her brain was fogging up with wild fancies.

But she was close to her goal, she had to be. The main burial chamber would be behind a big, important door like this. She hurried up the stairs on the other side, through a tunnel, dark with no draugr able to get through the puzzle door to light the braziers, and out into a vast, pillared chamber. She startled a colony of bats that took flight around her, their leathery wings churning the air around her head, and flocked up and out into a cavern that put all other caverns to shame.

Water spilled into it from fissures in the wall and a hole in the ceiling. The ancients had channeled it into a moat surrounding the raised center of the cavern, and there . . .

The clouds parted, and moonlight fell through the hole in the roof to light the face of an enormous black wall, worked all over with mystic designs in ebony. Carved on it was . . . Ethne didn't know. A strange helm? Some beast of the ancient world, lost even to legend? Something about the flaring side pieces suggested rushing jaws and sweeping horns. The eyes, though, the eyes were those of a dragon. They caught her, held her, and she had crossed a bridge over the moat and begun climbing the stairs up to the wall without realizing she was doing it.

And there _was_ a sound. The air around her thrummed with voices, chanting syllables she didn't know to the beat of a drum that echoed the beat of her own heart, drawing her in.

The lower part of the wall was inscribed with angular marks, and some of them glowed with magical fire. Once her eyes fell on them, she couldn't turn away. As she approached, tendrils of light shot out to her, dancing over her body, sinking into her veins, and setting her nerves alight. Every hair on her body stood on end. A voice was whispering to her. She couldn't understand it, wasn't sure it was even using words, but the marks on the wall glowed brighter and brighter, excluding all else from her sight, until finally, a corresponding light snapped on in her brain, and she recognized it. A word.

 _Fus_.

She felt, deep in her bones, the gravity of the earth pulling her down to it. She felt the wind bending the trees and the waves crashing on the rocks. She felt strong wings beating against the sky. She felt _force_.

The magic let her go. She staggered back in a half-blind daze, gasping for breath.

What the _fuck_. What in all the bloody hells of Oblivion had just happened to her?

A noise from behind: the crack of stone unsealing. Ethne whirled around, blinking rapidly to clear the streaks from her vision. There was a black sarcophagus; she had been so engrossed with the magic wall that she hadn't noticed it before. Its lid flew up and smashed face-down on the ground. Out of the coffin rose up a draugr. This one was different from the others. He looked much the same, but the way he glared at her with those awful glowing eyes, Ethne knew he hated her.

" _Drun volaan?_ " he coughed in his harsh, guttural voice. " _Dovahgolz?_ " He laughed. " _Dir ko maar_."[1]

Ethne raised her axe and her torch, but he didn't charge her. Instead, he opened his lipless jaws and sucked down a dry, rattling breath.

" _FUS RO DAH!_ "

Something invisible slammed into her. She flew back, cracked her head against the wall, and dropped to her knees on the ground. Sparks exploded before her eyes, and for a moment she had no idea which way was up, but she knew if she didn't move she was dead. Forcing her legs and arms to push, she lurched up drunkenly and fell again. The draugr's battleaxe clanged against the stone where she had just been. She didn't try to get up a second time, but crawled as quickly as she could away, toward her torch, which was guttering nearby. Her enemy's footsteps followed her. She lunged for the torch, laid her hand on it, and rolled to the right, avoiding another deathblow. Lying on her pack, she saw the draugr turn toward her, his cold eyes stabbing out hatred and fury. He opened his jaws to draw breath again. If he finished, so she would be.

She made herself leap up and fall on the draugr, torch thrust out before her. She shoved it up into his ribcage, where it lodged. He began to burn.

" _Ni!_ " He shoved her away from him with one bony hand and raised his battleaxe, but already the weight was too much for the cinders of his spine. His torso collapsed into his pelvis. He fell. The lights of his eyes went out forever.

Ethne lay panting and trembling on the floor. She felt sick and dizzy after that last effort. Her head pounded, and tentative exploration with her fingers found a goose egg about the size of her fist. How stupid of her, not to have a helmet. But she still had a healing potion, and thank the Divines that the bottle hadn't broken during the fight. She chugged it down and willed her stomach not to revolt on her until it had done its work.

Gradually, the pain receded to a tolerable dull ache, and Ethne sat up and had a look around. She was surprised that she could see at all, but the skies outside had cleared, and moonlight picked out the contours of the cave in silver-pink lines.

The Dragonstone, she remembered. Where was the Dragonstone?

There was a large chest next to the coffin, so she checked there first. Amazingly, it was not locked, and it contained an impressive set of ancient armor that she supposed must have belonged to the dead draugr. She considered filching it, but she didn't fancy carrying it on her back all the way to Riverwood in her condition, never mind Whiterun, and she also didn't fancy bearing arms and armor that announced to the world that she was a graverobber. Anyway, the horned helmet looked silly. She promised herself that she would get a practical one as soon as possible once she was back among the living.

She didn't find anything that might be a Dragonstone in there. A small shelving unit beside the coffin was also a bust. She'd avoided looking into the coffin itself, but finally she had to. Of course, there she found it. Farengar had said that it would be interred.

Ethne couldn't make much out of it in the moonlight, but she recognized the same emblem at the bottom of the stone as on the top of the wall. Definitely a dragon, then, and why a magical dragon wall had talked to her and shot her full of alien knowledge, she had no strength to contemplate.

She bundled the stone into her backpack—gods, it weighed a bloody ton. After using her flint and steel to light a fresh torch, she climbed a tall staircase on the far side of the wall, hoping that up meant out. When she came to a dead end, she despaired at the thought of walking all the way back the way she'd come. It took her fatigued brain a moment to realize that the odd thing on the pedestal in front of her was a handle. She spent an embarrassingly long time searching for nonexistent traps before she finally pulled it and opened the hidden door. Cool, rain-washed night air rushed over her sweaty face, and she knew she was free.

She hurried along the tunnel as quickly as she could, intent on finding the exit and getting her bearings before deciding where to curl up for the rest of the night. The tunnel let out onto the mountainside. To the north, she spotted a tower, and she thought it was the same one she'd seen from the path leading up to the barrow. She'd stayed away from it then, and she intended to do the same now. It didn't look like anything could climb up to where she was too easily, and she'd killed everything that might have come up on her from behind, so the tunnel would be her campsite.

* * *

1.  
a: "Why this intrusion?" Lit. "Cause/bring intrusion?" (Can you believe there's no word for "why" or "what" in Dovahzul?)  
b: Lit. "[The] Dragonstone?"  
c: Lit. "Die in terror."


End file.
